For Design Week, Sotheby’s Is Where It’s At

The design sales are on, with four auctioneers showcasing more than 100 years in home decor. While decorative arts and design sales don’t usually get as frenzied as fine art sales (as the painting and sculpture auctions are dubbed), this season’s results promised to be strong, particularly at Sotheby’s.The action started last week. Christie’s December 8 sale was the first for a new team of specialists cobbled together with talent from the auction and museum world following the springtime exodus of the last crew who left to puruse different professional and personal endeavors, according to Christie’s. The department includes two former Phillips de Pury staffers as well as the former American furniture expert at Doyle and an assistant curator at MoMA.It does take time for a department to ramp up, and the first sale, with just 100 lots, totaled a meager $3.9 million. More than a third of the lots failed to sell. One stand-out was a furniture collection consigned by the University of California at Berkeley. An iron and rosewood desk by Pierre Chareau, remarkably streamlined and industrial for 1927, went for $567,500 – well higher than the $250,000-$350,000 estimate.Christie’s was at a disadvantage, as they held their sale a week before everyone else. But things picked up this week with Phillips de Pury’s sale on Tuesday.Yesterday Bonhams & Butterfields, the California and London auctioneer, held their first New York sale. The 300-lot auction had a smattering of design hits, totaling $1.3 million, from Tiffany to Ruhlmann. The most interesting part of the sale, though, was 30 lots by New York-based artist Nicola. Nicola, who goes by just one name, started out as a painter and later moved on to performance art and video. A collector consigned some 30 pieces of furniture, and this was a rare chance to see (and buy) some of her objects from the late 1960s.But the material Sotheby’s has assembled for this weekend blows all the other sales away. James Zemaitis, who runs Sotheby’s 20th-century design department, is clearly an overachiever. He put together not one but four sales, with a projected sale total of $13.6-19.5 million.“It seems like December is when everyone wants to sell,” said Mr. Zemaitis, dressed in a pinstripe suit and clutching a bottle of Vitamin Water. “I think people get into our curated approach.”Darryl Hannah and Diane von Furstenberg hit the previews this weekend, along with actress Ellen Barkin – who is married to mogul Ron Perelman, a serious Deco collector. The sales begin tomorrow morning at 10:15 and run through Saturday afternoon.“It’s a sea of furniture,” said private dealer Gregory Kuharic. “It will be interesting to see if the market can absorb this much material.”The same question was on everybody’s lips last December, of course, when Mr. Zemaitis churned out four sales that totaled $19.5 million – including $7.5 million for a Mies van der Rohe house. This time around, there is an equally varied set of sales.Tomorrow morning begins with a single-owner collection of furniture owned by dealer Barry Friedman. The trailblazing decorative arts dealer decided to clear out a warehouse, and the sale includes enough chic French furniture to make any society decorator weep. There are 1940s dining tables by Mai son Jansen and 1940s floor lamps by Gilbert Poillerat.Mr. Friedman has decided to move on from his early passions and early 20thcentury furniture. He is devoting himself to the new design gods, such as Ron Arad, with whom he is working on a book. As for that empty warehouse, it won’t remain empty for long. Friedman’s dashing deputy, Marc Benda, who breezed by Sotheby’s Monday afternoon, admitted that a 40-foot container filled with new treasures was on the way.Tomorrow afternoon will bring a sale of early American material – named “American Renaissance” by Sotheby’s – including a collection of furniture designed by California architects Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene. The collection is identified as “Property from an Important American Collection,” but dealers say it belongs to scholar Randell Makinson. Mr. Makinson has written numerous books on Greene and Greene and the collection includes splendid examples of this West Coast Arts and Crafts aesthetic, including a 1908 lantern estimated to fetch $100,000-$150,000.While Brad Pitt is a serious Greene and Greene devotee, the sale with the highest degree of hip factor is a single owner collection to be consigned by Robert Rubin, slated for December 18, with the Euro-fabulous name “Equipement Interieur: A Private Collection.” Mr. Rubin is an intrepid collector who has already sold an Americana collection worth $4.2 million at Sotheby’s, as well as a Ferrari that went for $10.9 million. When the former Wall Streeter moved into a TriBeCa loft, he began buying French Modernist furniture by designers such as Jean Prouve and Charlotte Perriand.Much of the sale material was originally made for colonial outposts -so this stuff is ideal for that mythical hedge-fund guy living in the downtown loft – someone with pots of money and ample square footage. The collection, expected to sell for between $1.5-2.1 million, includes a battered 1952 Prouve chair made for a French university (est. $40,000-$60,000) and a 1952 storage rack designed by Charlotte Perriand for housing in Brazzaville, Congo (est. $18,000-$24,000).Mr. Rubin may be selling some of the collection, but he’s also turned his passion for the designers into a Ph.D thesis project at Columbia University – in fact, the auction catalog for the sale will be part of this thesis.“The Collection of Barry Friedman, Ltd.” December 17 at 10:15 a.m.; “American Renaissance: Including An Important Private Collection of Greene & Greene” December 17 at 2 p.m.; “Important 20th Century Design” December 18 at 10:15 a.m.; “Equipement Interieur: A Private Collection” December 18 at 10:15 a.m. All at Sotheby’s (1334 York Avenue, at 71st Street, 212-606-7000). Exhibition: today-December 16.

For Design Week, Sotheby’s Is Where It’s At

For Design Week, Sotheby’s Is Where It’s At

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